On a need for validation, and how that translates to writing, acting, and making purchases with a credit card.

Rob Williams wrestles with a strange and disturbing riddle in this true story about the lives of elementary school boys.

Jesus Angel Garcia does the Six-Question Sex Interview!

Rebecca Adler learns that living in Istanbul isn’t going to be as easy as she had previously thought. From the grocery store to the language to the subway system, she is slowly learning her way around this new city.

They tell me you should write about what you know. I’ve always had a problem with that. I may know some things other people don’t, but in writing that down, what good does that do me? Not much. I already know it. I want to write about things I don’t know about. I want to [...]

These arrangements of empty chairs are what’s left of celebration, argument, meditation, sleep and revelation.  They huddle together like still animals in the cold.  From a chair beneath a plane tree, the round tracks of a cane disappear into the gravel. The single chairs are absent of their poets, readers and afternoon philosophers. Those side [...]

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. -Mark Strand We’re in Brussels walking across a quiet square half-lost and cold.  The sky is gray, the city quiet.  What we thought we’d find isn’t here. “I’m hungry, I need to eat,” [...]

Every writer I know has trouble writing. Joseph Heller said that once. I would echo it here. Personally I don’t know a single writer who has an easy time writing. Especially fiction. Fiction seems to be a special kind of pain in the ass. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

The first thing that really nailed it was “Constantinople.” The word comes toward the end of Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop and when I pronounced it for the first time, finally, I think that lit the candle. Droplets spilled from the ducts of my parents and mine as we closed the book and then perhaps I [...]